Well, I have stayed up much later than I thought I was tonight, but for good reason. If you go to macromedia.com you will see why I am up so late.

I read John Dowdell's Blog and tonight I came across this entry and I was intrigued. I posted a comment saying I was in not realizing that the presentation started at 9pm pacific time since macromedia.com is on the west coast.

So midnight rolls around and I have no idea what the heck this presentation is about, but what the heck, its just sleep.

Turns out that they are launching Macromedia MX 2004 in mid September (Sept. 15 seems like the actual date, but they didn't want to commit to a firm date with good reason I am sure UPDATE: I recieved an email from someone at Macromedia and they told me that no official date has been set for the release, so Sept. 15th isn't it, however it should be available Mid-Sept.).

The presentation was conducted using Breeze Live, which from what I saw was very impressive indeed.

Below are some of the highlights from the presentation, which included a conference call:

Jennifer Taylor, the Dreamweaver Product Manager talked to us about some of the new features.

Foremost, massive performace boosts to Fireworks and Dreamweaver 'will blow you away.' And when I get my G5 in a few months I am sure these puppies will be blazingly fast.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 is CSS-centric. Macromedia claims that this will do for css what Dreamweaver did for html. The release includes many templates designed professionally using CSS to give people a jumpstart on designing their own solutions. A new relevant css pane shows the css properties of the slected item, and allows you to apply changes. This is very cool and I can see myself using it all the time.

The user interface is much improved, although sadly the multiple layouts that are available to windows users, and have been since Dreamweaver MX, are not available to the Mac users, my one disappointment with the release. A new start page has been added that allows you fast access to creating new documents and access recently created ones, much like the panes in newer versions of Office.

Speaking of Office, Dreamweaver MX 2004 offers up improved support for Word and Excel. Not only does it clean up Office generated text, it keeps formatting intact. For example, you have an excel sheet with a colored background, differently formatted cells, ect., all you need to do to make it into an HTML document is copy and paste it into Dreamweaver; the formatting remains. Not impressive enough? Did I mention the formatting is actually applied via CSS that Dreamweaver creates on the fly based on the copied information? Way cool.

Finally, one of the biggest improvements that must go hand in hand with emphasizing CSS is Cross-Browser Validation. This feature examines your code dynamically, and alerts you to the number of errors your code contains, and what exactly those errors are and what browser they will crop up in. The amount of effort that must of went into this feature alone is amazing.

Since it is 2am, I am going to just wait until tomorrow to cover the other things that came up in the presentation.

Overall, this is awesome and I can't wait to start using Studio MX 2004.

I've got a 1.54 liter Big Gulp HULK mug that i got from 7-11, which use at work for water. People feel compelled- obligated to make one of two comments whenever they see it: "Thirsty?" and "That's a BIG cup." For the record, yes I get thirsty sitting in front of my 'greenhouse effect' office window, and I am quite aware of the cup's size.

According to this CNET News.com article Microsoft is planning swift action in response to the recent surge of viruses and worms:

A Microsoft representative said the company is "giving strong consideration to enabling Auto Update by default in future versions of Windows," though the company has not yet committed to a time frame.

Did you hear that hackers? Strong consideration! Oh man, I love it when Bill comes out swinging like that. Next thing you know they are going to be thinking about making Internet Explorer more standards based.

Talk about freaky. I have been living in Philadelphia for maybe 5 months, before that I was living in Yonkers, NY. During my time in Yonkers I would watch the news, and all my tv channels were, of course, New York City channels. I would tune into WCBS (channel 2) and watch the news every once and awhile.

You see CBS news was always 3, NBC was the big kid on the block, ABC was the old statesman, and CBS was a distant third. Time after time they would revamp their entire news program (including staff) to no avail.

Vince DeMentri was on CBS 2 in NY, and to my knowledge he was still in NY. Imagine my shock to turn on NBC 10 at 11pm to watch the news, and who should I see? You guessed it, Vince DeMentri. I think he is stalking me.

I need to be kept very, very busy today. Why? because the G5's are on the shelves today. Maybe it's really time to burn the credit cards. Rip up my Apple credit account information.
Hmmm. But I wonder: Maybe I could sell my 8-month old G4 dual 1GB processor machine????? Then a G5 wouldn't be such a hit.

I am thinking along the same exact lines. I think it is a sickness that we mac people have. As soon as Steve Jobs introduces a new product I want to buy one. It doesn't matter that I have no real use the the iSoupStrainer. Jobs convinces me that is will completely change my life. And then Apple makes those promotional videos with Jon Ives talking about the incredible design decisions that went into the iSoupStrainer. It isn't just about straining soup anymore, its about making straining into an artform. And then they cut to Seal talking about how sexxy the curves are or something.

It is irrational, it is silly, but for us Mac users the temptation is there.

I have no idea what he is writing about though. Damn my American education. Can't the rest of the world just accept the fact that we Americans refuse to learn anything, and for their own good just learn English?

One of my favorite additions mentioned in the article she links to is:

On a lighter note, words from office life often crop up. "Prairie-dogging" is a term describing workers in cubicles who raise their heads above the partitions surrounding their desks to see what is going on.

I received hundreds of e-mail messages this morning, some from folks wanting to know why I was sending them infected messages, and the others bounce notifications sent because mail servers had rejected mail I had sent because of bad attachments. The problem? I did not send the mail, nor did my computer send them without me knowing.

Everything on this blog is Scott's opinion, and his opinion alone. It in no way reflects the opinions of his employers, friends, concerned passers-by, or anyone else for that matter. But you're smart, you knew that already.